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Wednesday, March 5, 2014

WIP Wednesday

Here's (one of) my current WIPs: a chevron quilt in a warm and sunny palette. I'm making this quilt for a friend who suffered a stroke during a medical procedure (she's only 36!). She's on the road to recovery, but I figure a quilt would be a good gift as she continues to rehab.

It took me a while to decide exactly what to do. I wanted it to be fast (ish) to make because I wanted to get it to her sooner than later. Ideally I wanted the quilt design to have some meaning. And, she's a warm color person, while I'm decidedly not. Choosing the colors and fabrics for this quilt was starting to become a stumbling block. But once I settled on the chevron pattern (more on that later), I raided my stash of red, orange, pink, purple and rust batiks and then bought yardage of four different yellow solids.
An evening of sewing with my sous-chef quilter friend Kathy, and we had HSTs for half the quilt top complete. I'm on my way with the second half as well. The batiks are randomly placed and I will still do some adjusting to spread the color out, as these were simply stuck to the wall to see how the overall look was coming. I'm considering trying a version where the yellows are mixed up as well, but at the moment I like the relative solid-ness of the yellow zigzags.

Here's where I am as of today:

I'm starting to like warm colors for quilting...especially the yellow! Pay no attention to the mess on the floor. It is NOT a reflection of what the rest of my studio looks like. Not at all.

Delicious batiks and buttery yellow squares, cut by my mom this past weekend (they say a quilt takes a village...). Ready to be stitched into more HSTs!

Back to the pattern. I wanted a design with a message, and the up and down of the chevron seemed to work well--the ongoing victories and frustrations of physical and occupational therapy. But I also wanted something to symbolize an overall positive ending. The design below is what I'm playing around with; I have yet to try it with actual fabric, so we'll see whether it works or not. What do you think?

6 comments:

I think that you have put a lot of thought and positive energy into this quilt. What a wonderful gift for your friend! The meaning behind the blocks and your vision for the quilt layout look wonderful. And I know exactly what you mean about the ups and downs of therapy and recovery. My brother in law suffered a stroke when he was 27 and it took him a year to learn to swallow again. It also took a while for him to walk without a walker and then a cane. He turns 40 this year and in celebration he is going on a 50+ mile walking tour of England.